


In Which Karkat Vantas Learns to Share

by tawnyPort



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Implied Relationships, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-15
Updated: 2012-10-15
Packaged: 2017-11-16 08:43:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/537601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tawnyPort/pseuds/tawnyPort
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gamzee has discovered the human holiday of Halloween and wants to help Karkat prepare for it and for a lot of other things while he's at it. Palefluff.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Which Karkat Vantas Learns to Share

**Author's Note:**

  * For [suchanadorer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/suchanadorer/gifts).



When Rose and Kanaya inform you they have taken Gamzee out and that he has a surprise for you, you are fucking petrified from the tips of your horns to the bottoms of your feet. Nobody warned you, nobody consulted you or coordinated with you and this is totally unacceptable. How do they not see that? How do they not see that they have put your entire undisturbed existence in this world at risk just so that Gamzee could get a little fresh air or whatever the hell it was his rotten pan decided was a good reason to coerce two people into escorting him without your knowledge?

And why didn't he ask you? He's obviously gotten a clue to the fact that pretty much anyone, even Rose apparently, would be a better moirail than you. What a fun surprise.

You sigh and put your head down on your arms, the tip of your nose bending against the table. “What happened? How many died?”

Kanaya smacks you in the back of the head. “I realize he has killed multiple times and he is generally considered to be dangerous and unstable, but Gamzee is also a grown troll, as am I, and Rose is also an adult by human standards. There was a time you would have admired a troll with a death count like Gamzee's at such a young age. You may have been a leader at one point and you may be Gamzee's moirail but as you have yourself stated this does not make you his grubsitter. Three consenting adults are allowed to travel as a group to the mall any time they so choose and today, Gamzee so chose. Personally I think you ought to be proud of him for electing to go with people who are capable of handling things should they get out of control rather than just going by himself and causing who knows what kind of national calamity, but then perhaps I have been too generous with you.”

Her many, many words sting almost as much as the slap. You're not going to acknowledge this directly, though, because then she would win. “That's all very touching, Kanaya, thank you for the dissertation on what a horrible moirail I am. I will add your evidence to the ream of notes I already have from literally every other fucking person in this hive who is not actually my moirail and therefore not in a position to judge my qualifications, though that sure doesn't stop you pants staining assholes. That said, nothing you just shared in that cacaphonic waterfall of disappointment answered my question, and... you have a black eye.” She has a black eye. Oh god, what the hell happened out there? 

Kanaya, for her part, gently touches the cheekbone below the bruise, smirks and leaves the room. “YOU ABSOLUTE BULGESHINING DUMBASS, GET BACK IN HERE.”

This time the slap comes from Rose. “Watch your mouth around my girlfriend.” You hear Kanaya laughing just outside the door and have to physically put your hand over your mouth. They're ganging up on you. Where are Strider and John when you need them? No, fuck John, he'd take their side, but you know you can count on Dave to back you up. Maybe. “No one died,” Rose replies with a very dramatic sigh, “and what happened was he got you a present. Maybe even a couple of them but I'm not at liberty to tell you. What I can say is, you really can be an ungrateful tool, Karkat.”

You slouch your agreement. “So what'm I supposed to do with this information? Wait until 12th Perigee's Eve and receive my gift with a look of shock and appropriate level of shame if such a thing exists?”

“No. It wouldn't make sense to wait until then.” She shrugs and starts toward the door herself. “He's in his room. I think he might actually be waiting for you.”

You wait only a beat after she leaves the room before rising and heading to Gamzee's block. From the hallway everything appears normal: no flickers on the wall indicating anything is on fire, no screaming, no blood of any color pooling out into the hallway. Just the rustle of plastic bags and your moirail's voice, singing to himself as he goes about whatever he's doing in there. “Doooo doodoodoodooo doo doo dooo dooo doo, doo dodoo doo dodoo doo...” Whoever introduced him to that song deserves to be thrown off the roof of the tallest hivestem in the city and to hit every balcony on the way down. Normally human music is just weird to you but this particular song coming from his mouth is just wrong. Especially the whistling. Fucking Strider. He is the actual devil.

“Hey Gamzee.” You are probably the only person in the hive who doesn't have to announce themselves before entering Gamzee's block but you like to do it anyway. Common courtesy combined with one too many occurrences of walking in on your moirail completely undressed have taught you this is the highest form of wisdom.

“Palebro!” The rustling intensifies and you hear the sound of a desk chair being moved. “Just get to be waiting one second...” The chair appears before he does. “Cop a squat!”

“Why can't I just walk into your room like a normal person on a normal day?” You eye the chair. It's not that you don't know what goes on in Gamzee's desk chair, and you don't really mind all that much. It's more that he had the foresight to ask you to sit down. “Look, if this is about the surprise, Lalonde and Maryam already said you had something you wanted to tell me and if it's so bad that you need me to sit down then maybe it's better if you tell me in the hallway because it's less distance for me to shamble sightlessly back to my room through the torrent of lacrimal secretions I will most assuredly not be shedding if you decide to dump me, you luna--”

“Hush.” He puts his hand over your mouth and lifts his eyebrows until they disappear into the shaggy curtain of his hair. That combined with the slight tilt of his head makes for a very fucking eerie effect for a moment, but then his eyes resume their standard heavy-lidded operations. “If that's what they told you then you have been most grievously up and lied to. It's ain't nothing like that. Now sit your chubby ass down and we'll get to setting some righteous truths up in here.”

“Chubby.” You scowl at him but turn around and sit in the chair. “Fuck you, you scrawny tube of waste deposit. Not everyone is blessed with the metabolism of a meth-addicted dustbeast. Some of us actually like being able to sit down without our pelvic bones tearing holes in our pants.”

“Relaaaaaaaax.” He ruffles your hair—you knew he was going to do that, he's like a fucking clock with the shit you can count on from him sometimes—and starts to pull the chair back into his room. “So I got a question to be asking you. Do you motherfucking trust me, Karkat?”

“What? Of course, Gamzee, that's such a stupid question I can't even begin to address it. No, I just always let people I don't trust spend the night with me in my coon or have access to my computer. That's just how I operate. My life is a revolving door and you are just one of thousands of people I offer these privileges to because trust is not an issue.” Still, you lean your head back against his fingers where they're curled over the top of the back of the chair and look up at him. “Of course I trust you. With my life, you dumbass.”

He grins down at you. “Then close your motherfucking eyes.”

“What is this, In Which a Female Midblood Who Conforms to Societal Standards of Attractiveness is Taken Captive By a Creature of Unknown Origin in Exchange for Her Lusus's Freedom, After Which a Series of Events Occur that Lead to the Development of Pity Between the Attractive Female and the Creature Including but Not Limited to Dancing, Consuming Food Together and the Sharing of Personal Secrets, Resulting in the Female Admitting to Flushed Feelings for the Creature but Only She Has Been Given Temporary Freedom from his Hive in Order to Care for Her Ailing Lusus. During Her Absence the Creature's Life Has Been Put in Peril by Outside Parties but the Creature is Redeemed and His Life is Save by Her Confession of Flushed Feelings and He is Transformed from a Creature into a Male Highblood Who Conforms to Societal Standards of Attraction and They Enter Into a Lifelong Matespritship?” You comply. He's not going to dump you. Gamzee is many disturbing, problematic things, but he's not a liar. Knowing that makes the entire situation, however bizarre, at least that much easier to play along with.

“Nope.” You feel the chair rolling toward the location of his desk. The rustling of the plastic bags starts up again once he's satisfied with your location, then you feel him push off the chair and hear a thump. A quick reach out and you can touch his knee. He's sitting on the desk in front of you. OK. You like to know where he is.

“Seriously, Gamzee, whatever it is you want to tell me, I can handle it.” The secrecy was kind of endearing but you don't deal well with anxiety and he's really dragging this out.

“Nothing to tell, my sweetest motherfucker. Got something to show you, though.” There's the soft frictiony sound of something being unscrewed and you get a whiff of a familiar scent. His face paint.

“Oh, fuck no, Gamzee. No, I am sorry but--” His hand covers your entire face. The heel of it presses into your mouth, preventing you from talking, and his fingertips hold your eyes closed. God he's cold. 

“No buts. You said you got your trust in me so you got your trust in me. Just up and listen a bit.” He squeezes your face for a second—who decided that was a gesture of affection? Only a deranged clown would think, Hey, I bet crushing my moirail's face like a ripe grapefruit will make him feel all warm and fuzzy inside—then releases it. “I was kicking some wicked Xbox shit with John the other day and he got to asking me what we all were going to be for Halloween. I told him I wasn’t having any idea what that motherfucker was talking about and he told me it’s a human holiday where they dress up as whatever the fuck they feel like and go from hive to hive getting candy or playing pranks.”

You hear a creak and the balance of the chair shifts. Lifting a hand, you tentatively reach toward the arm of the desk chair. Yep, that’s a foot. “Gamzee, you can’t just trap me in the chair.”

“Can and have done,” he replies with a chuckle, lightly kicking your hand back into your lap. “It’s not nice to interrupt a motherfucker, you know? So you just shoosh and get chill with me here. Ain’t gonna do nothing but put a little paint up and on your face, and if you really ain’t down with it after, ain’t like it’s forever.”

“OK, OK, let’s just get this over with. Where the hell do you come up with these ideas anyway? I have never onc—“ He’s squishing your face again. Fuck him and his giant freak hands. You slump back in the chair, puffing an indignant sigh against his palm, and cross your arms over your chest. 

“Why you gotta be like that, my palest motherfucker?” He’s probably pouting but you’re not opening your eyes. You know he’s not actually hurt. His voice is more playful than anything, light and bouncy. Jerk. He’s enjoying this. “I was about to relay that most bitchtits of anecdotes but you keep up and talking over me. I’m thinking you’re done with that shit now though…” He releases your face and you stay silent. The sooner he gets started, the sooner it will be over.

“Thank you.” He pulls the chair closer just using his feet. “Now, I was trying to get my communication on with you about this celebration coming out of the blue of insugarification that is oh so true cuz I was hoping that you, as your interest grew, would get over your reservation and that you’d come too.” He punctuates his wicked rhymes with a sponge to the end of your nose and all you can smell is makeup. His first stroke is really more of a shove running over the tip of your nose and down to the top of your lips. You know it’s probably meant to make sure you stay quiet, but after that he’s surprisingly gentle. If he’d let you talk you’d begrudgingly admit that his years of practice at this are obvious.

“Egbert was saying that his favorite part of Halloween is that he gets to up and get his prankster’s gambit leveled. That windy motherfucker lives for that shit, I never really had much knowing about that.” Since he started with your nose he seems to plan on working his way out from there, sweeping the sponge over your cheekbones. “He was talking on and on about toilet paper and eggs and some other shit, I don’t really know, I started tuning that motherfucker out, but then he started talking about how it’d probably be my favorite day of the year because nobody’d be looking at this motherfucker like a freak anymore.”

You can feel your hands starting to fist by your thighs. Dammit, Egbert, what the fuck was going on between those absurdly large ears of yours that made you think calling Gamzee a freak would be a good idea? You know they don’t know each other very well but that’s the fucking point. Of course, John wouldn’t think about that, John really doesn’t ever fucking think, does he? Nope, just goes around calling people names like shit just rolls off everybody else like it does off him

“Shoosh, bro, it’s all good.” He paps the top of your head lightly and you start to relax. “I told him it’d be the only day he could wear his motherfucking breezy pjs out without looking like the homosexual he’s got his panic up and on about being thought of as.” He chuckles again, a little lower this time, and the sponge moves up to your forehead. “That shut him right the fuck up, but it had already planted a wicked little seed all up in my pan and I wasn’t about to let that die. Wasn’t about to talk to Egbert about it anymore either, though, motherfucker had all the wrong ass priorities for my necessities. Took my ass over to Lalonde instead because chick is spooky as shit so if this is a day I ain’t gonna look like a freak then it’s gotta have something up and of interest for her.” You can feel the makeup in your eyebrows and now he’s holding your hair up, carefully dabbing and dragging along your hairline. He scratches his nails lightly on your scalp before letting your hair fall back down.

“So I chatted up that most Rosiest of seers and she told me she never got too much into all the Halloween shit on account of her mom not taking her out and on further fucking account of it being a lifestyle choice to be spooky.” He’s working on the lower half of your face now, pressing smooth arcs over your cheeks. You can feel the weight of it on your face, foreign and somewhat stiff. Not much stiffer than you try to keep your face normally, though. “I asked her if that was why she was still all getting her matespritship up and on with a motherfucking rainbow drinker and she fucking laughed at me, said she never thought of it that way before.”

Your jaw clenches under his touch. She laughed at him. Stupid fucking Lalonde. The cosmetic sponge swirls in circles along the line of your jaw and Gamzee’s fingertips press up underneath your chin to tilt your head back. “Caaaaalm. Shoosh. It ain’t even shit between me and the seer but peace. That led to a whole other fucking conversation but the final point we ended up all coming to an agreement around was that we should get all us motherfuckers together and go out trick or treating. That’s what they call this shit of going door to door begging or making threats. Trick or treating.” He paints the soft place under your jaw, not quite going down to your throat. “And I got my decision on that you were coming with us but that it had to be a surprise and it had to fucking come from this motherfucker right here.” 

“All you had to do was ask me, you sketchy ass pan fried numbskull. You know I’d do damn near anything you asked me to do. You want me to go with you and bang on strange humans’ hive doors demanding candy…”

“Nope. I want you—” and here he leans forward and touches the end of his nose to the end of yours, he’s some kind of contortionist in addition to all the other creepy shit he does, “to come out and get this trick or treating shit on with all of us. Every single motherfucker.”

“What’s the big difference? And can I open my eyes yet? I’m not exactly burning with desire to take in what you’ve done to my face since I am not and never will be a subjuggulator, but I know this is important to you. You went way out of your way to keep it a secret from me, you tell me everything but I think I’m probably the only person you didn’t talk to about this whole Halloween nonse… Oh.”

Yeah, he put a lot of time and effort into surprising you with this idea. Spent a lot of time talking to other people in the house. Without you there.

You had to share him, had to let him loose and you didn’t even know it until now, but it hits you like a ton of bricks. You got used to the idea of having to sequester Gamzee, keep him away from everybody else for their own safety because the guy was prone to moments of extreme homicidal mania. It never really crossed your mind that you might, even just a little bit, be doing that for yourself, too. He was the one thing you stood a chance in this entire fucking universe of doing right and you’d be fucked if you were going to let any of those miscreants mess him up.

But maybe that wasn’t up to you, and that scared the shit out of you. That didn’t make it any less true, though. Being his moirail meant protecting his ass from himself, not from everybody else.

“I got a wicked suspicion,” he says as he takes his hand out from under your chin, “that your eyes are already way the fuck open. Because all I really wanted to know from my most conciliatory motherfucker is, do you trust me?”

You lower your head and slowly, going one at a time, you crack open your eyes. He’s holding a mirror up in front of you and peering over the top of it, waiting for your reaction. It’s startling to see your face covered in the stark whiteness you typically associate with Gamzee and by extension with the subjuggulators, but he didn’t just make you look like him. The edge of the makeup is contoured to accent the curves of your face and, in a detail that makes you roll your eyes and him chuckle like an utter lunatic, he’s left bare patches above your eyebrows that mimic the nubby shape of your horns. Whatever. He thinks it’s funny but you think it makes your horns look taller. So fucking there.

“Congratulations. It’s not completely horrible. I would even be willing to go out in public with you done up like this, considering this is a brand new universe where robots won’t descend from the sky and skewer me like an oinkbeast for daring to leave the hive like this.” You lift one hand and put it over his where it’s holding the mirror, slowly lowering it until you can see his entire face. “Or at least, I am taking it on extreme fucking faith that that scenario will not occur, and if putting my life in your hands by letting you paint my face just because it makes you happy isn’t trust then I don’t know what is.”

“You have no idea how much that up and puts the joy in my blood pusher, palebro.” His toes are curling on the arms of the chair and that is so fucking endearing even if his feet are absolutely gross. “There might be just one more motherfucking hurdle to get past…” Your moirail turns his head a little, his expression shifting to a bizarre combination of sheepish and mirthful. You lean forward in the chair, trying to figure out—

“Is that a BITE MARK?” The black eye. Gamzee’s got a bite mark. Kanaya’s biting Gamzee and Gamzee’s punching Kanaya and you actually might not be completely prepared for this part, no. You are not prepared for even black flirtation between those two, let alone actual black solicitation like that. You actually fold yourself in half in the chair, knowing full well you’re getting face paint all over your pants and not giving even a shred of a fuck. You let the breath you were holding out in a slow, creaky moan and Gamzee moves his feet from the arm of the chair to your shoulders.

“Idontwannaknowaboutthispleasejustleavemealonetodie.”

“Nope.” He takes his feet down and hops off the desk, taking your head in his hands and resting his forehead against the back of your head. “Ain’t ever, ever gonna leave you alone like that, no matter what. You got your understanding on about that?”

“Canwejustnotgodnottalkaboutthisrightnoworpossiblyever?”

He just laughs again, his breath in your hair, of course he laughs, bastard, dick, is dickstard a thing because he is a complete dickstard, man, fuck this guy and you don’t know what you’d do without him because even if this is all his fault there’s no one you’d rather have laughing at you as you freak out. “If you say so, bro.”

**Author's Note:**

> The song Gamzee is not-singing is "Pumped Up Kicks," by Foster the People. Better run, better run, outrun my gun, etc.


End file.
